


Coming Back for You

by SockLing



Series: They Were... [4]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Emotionally Overwhelmed Ned, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Main Storyline, Pre-Jack the Ripper, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6105701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SockLing/pseuds/SockLing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is strangely quiet.</p><p>Ned is trying his best to learn to live in the suddenly suffocating silence.  And he's finding he just can't handle it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Back for You

**Author's Note:**

> So... this may have come about due to my inability to play Jack the Ripper after I saw older Jacob finally. It hit me that Ned wasn't going to be there and I got weirdly emotional, unable to move forward. So instead, I read the database entries and learned about Jacob's trip to India.
> 
> Because this is a series and not a chaptered work, I already have it set up to not be in chronological order and have decided to jump ahead roughly a decade. I will go back later to explain Ned's change in personality, as it has been my intention to explore him calming down as time goes on. Right now though, I wanted to explore this idea. There's so much room for feels here and I'm surprised I haven't found this story line yet.
> 
> Plus, I just think older Ned would be just as amazing as older Jacob.

It was strangely quiet.

Ned sat in his home, hunched over his desk in the fading light of the day, reading over ledgers and the schedules for his transportation business. It was his normal routine, to sit alone in his home and work himself to the point of being sick. It had become a little more difficult as he got older, his muscles aching more easily than ever before and his sight straining to read what he could have when he was in his twenties. A sigh left his lips as he pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.

Maybe this would have been easier with his usual distractions. Or distraction. Against his better judgment, he looked over to his bed, face going blank when something unpleasant happened in his chest. What had he even been expecting? Months later, Ned still wasn’t using that bed or the one on the train. He often just fell asleep at his desk and woke up with ink on his cheek and papers stuck to his forehead. When he had done that before, he got that stupid grin and a laugh.

“Dammit Ned.”

This thinking nonsense was making everything worse, so Ned put his glasses back into place and refocused on his work. The numbers were becoming second nature though, something he could think through with very little effort on his part. That often left his mind open to wander, and it would wander to awful places. Places of fear and longing. As it was, fear was starting to win out. The letters had been almost constant at first, soothing him at least somewhat. But slowly, they trickled down to nothing for the last five months. Not a peep, not a word.

Hadn’t Ned said he was scared of this exact thing? What Ned hadn’t mentioned was that he was scared this would be it. For the rest of his life. Silence. It hadn’t been so bad when he first moved to London, but that damn idiot had to go and ruin it with his loud laughter and flashy personality.

Ned ran a hand over his face and furrowed his brows when he pulled his hand back, slightly wet. Again with this crying bull shit. It was becoming more commonplace and Ned was hating every second of it. Some of his workers had noticed puffy eyelids and red eyes when he would arrive in the morning, and they would make comments. _Comments._ Because the act of crying wasn’t mortifying enough for Ned without someone else realizing and trying to console him. After the comments, he would lock himself into his office and just watch the workers.

The light around the room was dimming and swirling oddly. Ned huffed and rubbed his eyes, setting his glasses down on the desk. Not only were the tears gathering again, he couldn’t seem to keep his eyelids open. He would keep it a closely guarded secret, but Ned had been going without sleep more often than not since the letters stopped coming. His nights were plagued by nightmares, of death and people he’d never met before. The latest stint of sleepless nights had already lasted three weeks, Ned sitting up every night to watch the window while pretending to read.

Apparently that night was when his body finally broke and as he stood to try and find a comfier spot to pass out, his legs collapsed underneath him. His elbow hit first, sending a sharp jolt of pain through his arm, followed by the rest of his torso. At least his legs had already been bringing him down, so the fall for the upper part of his body was even shorter than normal. His head still stung a bit though, not the worst hit to the head he had ever had, but enough to make him groan.

If his body wanted to rest, so be it.

Ned closed his eyes and slipped into his darker dreams.

 

How strange.

His dreams had started with death and heartbreak, but they became him floating. Through the air, weightless, until he came to rest upon a cloud. There was a strange yet familiar sensation over his face, through his hair, on his lips. Then the sensation disappeared and Ned missed it sorely. It was so comforting, so familiar. When he cried out, hoping it would return, there was humming and then he was surrounded by such warmth.

Ned did his best to burrow into that warmth, but he couldn’t get close enough. His natural response was to whine, which made the warmth move oddly but the sensation was back in his hair. It was soothing, enough so for Ned to calm down and just enjoy the warmth and comfort as he continued to sleep.

Eventually though, he had to wake up. It was a slow, torturous process, as he was so reluctant to leave the comfort of the first pleasant dream he had in months. He would have to wake up alone and in that insufferable silence. But things were a bit different, it would seem. The first that he became aware of was the fact that the warmth didn’t disappear when he woke up. It was all encompassing, surrounding him as it did in the dream and he found he was loving it, unable to pull away.

Then he felt something heavy draped across his side and wrapped around his back.

Ned furrowed his brows, as that was far stranger than just being pleasantly warm. He _finally_ managed to crack open his eyes and look over his shoulder, going stiff when he realized the heavy item was a human arm. Something told him to relax though, when the arm tightened around him and pulled him closer to the warmth. Ned’s eyes followed the arm up a very clearly masculine body until they rested on a face he knew so damn well and had been missing sorely for longer than he cared to think about.

It took a moment for it to fully register that Jacob was in his bed, sleeping while wrapped around Ned. But when it finally did, he made a strange noise that he would never admit was a sob and woke Jacob, whose eyes shot open and he looked around the room. “Wha… what’s going on!?”

Ned never responded verbally, just threw himself at Jacob and almost threw them both off the bed. The larger man grunted from the force but caught them both before they could go tumbling. Ned barely noticed the peril though; he was so focused on clinging to the other man. Again, he would never admit it, but that also including peppering his face with kisses and ignoring the way the man grinned and chuckled. Jacob’s arms wrapped tightly around him again. “You know, I said I was coming back.”

“You ass!”

Jacob blinked a few times then made a face, confused. “I… don’t understand? You were happy before, when I kept sending you the letters. I thought if I kept sending them, you wouldn’t get too upset.”

“Kept sending them? I haven’t gotten any in almost six months!” Then Jacob just hugged him tighter, somehow, and practically wrapped around him. Ned was trying to be angry, he was, but he had missed Jacob so keenly over the course of too long for him to want to think about. There was a hand running through his hair as Jacob spoke again. “I did keep sending them. I guess they just never got back here. And what about you? I come home and you’re passed out on the floor and burning up.”

“It has been very difficult to sleep.” Now that Jacob mentioned it, he did feel like utter shit. So maybe his sleeping habits over the last several months had weakened his body and he became ill, it was nothing he couldn’t handle. Jacob just sighed and laid back down on the bed, on his back with Ned on top of him. “Then maybe you should get some more sleep.”

Ned worked his jaw some then got comfortable, burying his face in Jacob’s neck with no intentions of moving. “All right, but you are not allowed to leave.” The other man chuckled and kissed the top of his head. “I have no intentions on leaving this house for at least a week.”

Ned could handle that, as he fell asleep on Jacob once again, the man wrapping them in a blanket the way Ned loved the most - all of his head covered.

Jacob was _amazing_.


End file.
